


When We Crumble

by Winterstar



Category: White Collar
Genre: Brutality, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied Violence, M/M, medical content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:56:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4027666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an answer to a prompt  by <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://rabidchild.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://rabidchild.livejournal.com/">rabidchild</a> and she did the beta to - so many many thanks!. You can find it <a href="http://whitecollarhc.livejournal.com/79711.html?thread=787295#t787295"> here</a>. Peter wakes up in Neal’s apartment with no recollection of what happened. The apartment is covered with blood and he’s being held on suspicion of murder – Neal’s murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When We Crumble

**Author's Note:**

> *U-ICU is based on something they do near where I live. Not sure they do it in NYC. Oh and the title is from the wonderful new song by Adele "Skyfall" - it is for the new Bond movie - good for a story about James Bonds, right?

  
The click of the handcuffs slams into his brain like a battering ram. He never realized the finality of the sound before; he never understood the consequences of having your wrists locked together as the drone of your rights was recited to you. One of the US Marshals looks at him, his eyes are weary and there’s a long scar down the side of his face that lines his cheekbone.

“Do you understand these rights that I’ve read to you?”

He doesn’t answer at first, he can’t. The world collapses around him in an ever shrinking time bubble. What happened? Why is he here? He looks down at himself and sees the stains of blood over his chest, the rake of nails down his torso, his shirt is torn open. He looks at his pants. At least they let him put his pants on; at least he’s not going to prison naked with dried semen smeared on his belly. And the blood is still there – all over.

Everywhere.

No one could survive losing that much blood.

No one.

He swallows down hard and looks back at the officer.

“Agent Burke, do you understand your rights as we’ve read them to you?”

“Y-yes,” Peter stammers. “Yes. But-.”

“Yes?” The man waits; but Peter can tell he’s not a patient man.

“What am I being charged with again?”

The US Marshal lifts the bloodied anklet and, in a bored voice, says, “We’re detaining you for possible aiding and abetting a known felon and the suspicion of rape and murder of said felon.”

“What?” Peter blinks, the lights are too harsh. Everything hurts his eyes from the stains all over the floor to the bright daylight glinting off the spires of the cityscape.

“Agent Burke, you’re being arrested on suspicion of the rape and murder of Neal Caffrey.”

*oOo*

The stink of the Marshal’s car overwhelms him and he gags as the vehicle makes its way through mid-morning traffic. The throbbing of his head plays a staccato with the horns and engines running along the streets. He thinks it might be possible he has a head wound or concussion or something. There has to be a reason he cannot remember anything.

_Neal’s eyes are hurt, glaring at him, begging him for an answer._

He shivers as the flash comes to him, but means nothing. When was the last time he saw Neal and where? He still smells of Neal, of his musk, his semen, the metal of his blood.

_“Don’t do this, please, please don’t do this._

_“Peter!”_

The words crash into his already abused brain and he cannot make sense of it. The terror in Neal’s voice robs him of all thought. He hears it over and again. _please don’t do this…_ Was Neal pleading with him? Did Peter do something to Neal? Did he hurt him, rape him, kill him?

His stomach turns and he cannot stop the flood of bile and acid. He bends over and pukes in the backseat of the cruiser. The Marshal, with the scar on his face, curses and peers back at him in the rearview mirror.

“Agent Burke, are you ill?”

Peter tries to clear his vision, tries to wash away the look of Neal desperate, hurt, and asking him for mercy. “I think I hit my head.”

The Marshal glances once at his partner and they concede to call it in. The car changes direction to head toward the hospital. “Try not to fuck up my car anymore.”

Peter leans back, sitting against his cuffed hands, and closes his eyes.

_“You never trust me, Peter, never. Now what the hell are we going to do?”_

_“We have to call in the bureau. We have no choice, now.”_

_“We do have a choice.”_

_“No, we don’t.”_

_“You son of a bit-.”_

“Agent Burke, we’re at the hospital,” the Marshal says and Peter thinks he recalls his name might be Thompson or Thomas or maybe even Doubting Thomas, he has no idea. “Please exit the vehicle.”

Peter ducks his head and sidles over to the side of the car to climb out. It isn’t easy with his arms locked behind his back. The Marshal grabs his upper arm and leads him to the emergency room. After a brief conversation with the nurse on staff at the front desk, Doubting Thomas brings him to a triage bed and helps him onto the gurney. He uncuffs his wrists but switches over the link and locks it to the bedrail. A small kidney shaped bowl is placed in his lap and he’s told to wait until the doctor can examine him.

Doubting Thomas stands by the curtain at parade rest and Peter frowns. He decides now is a good time to figure out what the hell is going on. They took his phone, his gun, and his badge. He doesn’t miss the latter two, just the first. He wonders if he should call Elizabeth or the office first when they give him his one phone call.

_His hands grip the sides of Neal’s face, pressing down until he can see the pain in Neal’s eyes. “Believe me; I’m trying to protect you.”_

_“You said that before, before this all happened.” The betrayal in Neal’s voice echoes and aches._

_“I’ve already run the blood, the DNA, they know who he is now.”_

_“That puts him in danger, Peter.”_

_He loosens his hold, but does not withdraw his hands. Instead, he tips his head to touch Neal’s forehead. “Don’t you understand? Can’t you understand?”_

_“Wh-what?”_

_“They know who you are now, Neal, they know. They know. Who. You. Are.”_

_The sound is breathless as if the air isn’t there to give it purpose. “Oh.”_

__

Damn it, what has he done? He looks down at his hands and sees the blood crusted under his fingernails, lining the palms of his hands. He recalls a struggle, Neal shoving at him. He remembers digging his hands into Neal’s hips, holding him still, thrusting into him.

He gulps in a breath. Christ, he didn’t do this. He didn’t hurt Neal. He closes his eyes but has to immediately open them again because he only sees Neal’s imploring look haunting him. He grits his teeth and it takes all of his willpower not to allow the tears forming in his eyes to roll down his cheeks.

Was he so out of control, he would do that to Neal?

Can he imagine hurting Neal?

The swing of a boxing glove comes to mind. His anger and confusion when Neal struck at him with rage fueled his retaliation to knock him out cold. He hadn’t considered how and when to hit him, he hadn’t worried about breaking his jaw in that moment. The only thing that resonated was the ability to injure, to harm, to maim, and he’d done it.

It sinks in, lower, deeper, heavier. Neal is dead. His lover is dead by his hand. The air thins around him and he rasps for a breath. He cups a hand over his mouth and steadies himself. He knows he’s always walked a line between righteousness and indignation. To be a law man is to be one step away from being a criminal. His thoughts spiral and he grapples to hold onto the idea of El, his life, his love, but that cycles back to Neal and he mourns the loss of his lover again.

“Boss? Boss?” Diana’s voice yanks him out of his dark space.

He blinks away the unshed tears and focuses on her. “Diana.”

She nods, her features solemn and questioning. “The Marshals made a courtesy call to the bureau on your behalf.”

Doubting Thomas gets a point in his book for that one.

“They also shared the evidence and the investigation thus far.” She’s having a hard time looking at him.

“I didn’t do this,” Peter says though he has no idea what he’s denying at this point.

She inhales sharply and agrees. “Yes. I can share a bit about what we know so far.” She doesn’t wait for his signal. “There was a scuffle or something at Neal’s apartment. There’s blood, a lot of it, all over the place. The walls, the balcony doors, the floors.”

“Is it Neal’s?” he asks though it comes out more like a garbled mess of words.

Still, she understands. “We’ll have to wait to find out. They’re testing the blood now. DNA. But they’ve found evidence that the bod- that Neal, if it was him, was moved.”

“Moved?”

“A rug from Mrs. Ellington’s entrance way is missing. There are blood stains along the stairs and near where the rug used to lay.”

“Don’t tell me, they think that I removed the body and then came back to clean up the place.”

She only nods her assent. “Boss, they also said-.”

“They said I raped him, too.”

“There were traces of semen on the floor that they are testing for DNA. They want to test the semen they said they found on you?” Diana says. Her stance is professional, cool, but her eyes show only disbelief.

His shoulders sag and he cannot believe how his world malformed in juddering moments. “Neal and I-. He and I.” He looks up at the ceiling and waits until the tears wetting his eyes subside. “Neal and I are lovers.”

To her credit, Diana doesn’t react. She only acknowledges this with a quick lift of her chin. “They won’t press charges on the aiding and abetting at this time, because they think you killed him. They’re holding you on suspicion of rape and murder.”

“Okay,” Peter says and then asks. “Can you call El for me?”

“Jones already did. She should be on her way.” She moves into the room, so that she is only a hair’s breadth away from him. “Boss, Peter, what happened? You didn’t do this, I know you.”

Can he deny something he doesn’t remember?

_A groan issues from him as he slams into Neal, as he quickens his pace. Neal struggles beneath him, clawing his nails down Peter’s chest. Peter leans down over Neal, bending him at a harsh angle so that discomfort rips across his lover’s face. “Why won’t you let me protect you?”_

“I don’t know.”

“What?” Diana has a hand on the side of the gurney and she’s waiting for an explanation.

There has to be an explanation from the great Peter Burke. He doesn’t have a dark side, he doesn’t dream of sodomizing Neal and then vivisecting him at night. He doesn’t have that kind of anger in him. He reaches up to his chest and feels the scabs of Neal’s nails. “I think I hit my head.”

“During the scuffle?” Diana asks. “Did Neal hit you? Maybe you were out of it when it happened?”

“When what happened? When someone came into Neal’s apartment, viciously murdered him and carried away his body?” Peter says, his tone bitter and bright.

“I don’t know, all I know is the Peter Burke I know couldn’t do this to anyone,” Diana states.

She’s interrupted by El as she enters into the triage room. “Especially to someone he loves.”

Diana steps back a pace as El walks up to Peter and kisses him. Her eyes are red and he can see the stress this situation has put her through takes its toll already.

Doubting Thomas has moved his sentry duty to inside the triage room. “The doctor is here to examine you, Agent Burke. I’m giving you some leeway with your spouse and your colleague; please don’t make me regret it.”

Peter thanks him and the doctor walks into the bay as the officer moves to stand guard outside the space. A barrage of questions from the doctor and answers from him ensue.

The doctor is a short Japanese man named Nakamura and he’s quick, efficient, and doesn’t seem to care about Peter’s new wrist jewelry. “I’d like to get a CT scan of your head. You said you experienced some time loss? Possible unconsciousness?”

The doctor feels his scalp and notes a large bump on the back of Peter’s head. He scrapes at it a bit which doesn’t make Peter feel any better at all. He wants to tell the doctor to stop but since the man has been nothing but kind so far with his questions and work, Peter smothers his sarcasm for another day.

“I’ll get you written up for the CT scan. Since you lost consciousness, I might want to have you stay the night.” The man looks up through the glasses that are perched on the tip of his nose. “Will that help you any?”

“Um, yes, sure, thank you,” Peter says.

“We’ll do that, then. I’m going to have to let the forensics scientist take a sample of the semen dried on your abdomen by order of the officer. Is that okay?” Nakamura asks again, this time he doesn’t look up but scribbles on the chart in his hands.

_He flicks his thumb over the tip of Neal’s erection. The tremors shoot through Neal in quavers as if he’s thrumming an instrument. He knows Neal needs this release. He knows they’ve fought and battled and bruised one another. Neal moans in his arms, beseeching Peter, hitching his breath, and arching his hips. The whimper in his voice borders on pain filled, but Peter teases him, tortures him until he begs for release, until he relents and opens for Peter._

It twists and squirms inside of him like a demented viper. What kind of man is he? He brutalized Neal, punished him, and then killed him.

“Peter?” Elizabeth says.

“Yes, that’s fine. It isn’t mine anyway. It’s his, it’s Neal’s.” Peter says and his face heats with shame. He covers his face with both hands and shuts away the world. He cannot live in a world where his beautiful wife believes in him, where his junior colleague trusts in him, where everything he is – is wrong.

Diana reaches and grips his arm, and he drops his hands from his face. “Admit nothing, Boss. Nothing.”

She leaves the bay and speaks with the officer outside the curtain for a moment.

“Peter?” El gazes up at him and her blue eyes remind him of Neal’s, of the question, the need, the urgency there.

The fear.

_“Peter!”_

_The bat flies and hits Peter in the shoulder. He crumples to the floor and his head knocks against the edge of the table as he plummets. The lights burst and blaze in his visual field and he hears Neal scream. He clamors to his feet again, using the table as a crutch._

_Hands are on Neal._

_So many hands._

_He’s naked and vulnerable._

_He yells for him, alarm streaking his voice._

_“Peter!”_

“He was so afraid, El,” Peter mumbles and he knows it is the first true thing he’s recalled. “So afraid and I couldn’t. I couldn’t help him.”

“Afraid of who?”

“I don’t know,” Peter says and looks beyond the curtain to the US Marshal standing at the curtain. “He was terrified and I couldn’t help him.”

_He loves Neal naked under him, writhing and shuddering beneath him. Being with Neal is like holding energy – raw, unencumbered energy. There’s so much of it, it is unnatural and heady. It makes him want more, it makes him desire everything that Neal might offer, can offer. All that he can offer and more. Being with Neal causes Peter to realize he is a greedy man. He doesn’t want anyone else to have Neal, he wants Neal for himself._

_As he slides home and stiffens his breath so he doesn’t come immediately, Peter wishes he can keep Neal away from everyone. He wants to keep him secure, safe, and protected. He can do these things to a degree. Yet, Neal represents chaos in his life. The flutter of his eyelashes tips the balance and storms ravage the landscape of life around him. Neal becomes the essence of the kinetics of life to Peter._

_His vibrancy blasts Peter and feeds Peter and builds Peter into something beyond the ordinary. It makes him a better man. As he pumps into Neal, as Neal twists and arches against him, Peter thinks in some ways he’s stealing something from Neal. He’s taking parts of his soul for his very own._

_He wants him._

_He hits again and Neal lifts up off the floor, his face wild with desire._

_He wants to hold him, protect him._

_Keep him._

_He loves him._

_He pushes farther, toward the brink and Neal begs with a contortion of pain on his face as if the waiting spears into him like a dagger._

_He memorizes Neal’s expression, sees every muscle twitch and bone jut. He wants him safe._

_He wants him._

_He loves him._

_He cannot control him._

_“Spill for me, babe.”_

_And Neal does, all over his belly, and Peter follows him, falling over him as his body rides out the waves. Neal pants in shallow breaths so much so that Peter tells him to slow down, breathe for him. Take a breath. They’ve climbed the mountain together. They need to rest. They’ll figure out what to do about Neal’s father later. Now, they need to sleep._

_Except there is no sleep._

_The door crashes in and his life ends._

__

*oOo*

“It wasn’t human, most of it,” Jones reports as he shows the file to Peter.

“Most of it?” Peter asks as Doubting Thomas walks into the room with Hughes.

The Marshal glowers at Peter but says nothing. He releases Peter from the handcuff and comments, “You’re released. Pending the investigation, don’t leave the state.”

Peter lifts his wrist and rubs at it, thinking of the many times Neal has suffered through being chained and locked up. The officer leaves as Jones, Hughes, and Diana crowd around the single bed in the small hospital room. Elizabeth left to purchase edible food just moments ago.

“They think most of the blood came from a local butcher shop,” Diana says.

“But some of the blood, well, all of the human blood is Caffrey’s,” Hughes states. “There’s also the question of the semen, Agent Burke.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hughes looks to his younger agents then back at him, the seasoned, knows-better-than-to-fuck-his-CI agent. “We have a lot of evidence and no idea what it all means. Did Caffrey set this up to run? Did you coerce Caffrey for something and force his hand to run? Or did you help him run? Right now, Peter, I’m holding off the dogs with a pretty thin leash.”

Peter looks down at the bed he’s been confined to for the last day. While he’s been treated for his head wound and some minor body bruising, Neal has been missing for more than twenty four hours.

“You’re not an investigator on this case, Agent Burke, but I want your full cooperation. Do you understand?” Hughes says.

For a second Peter is back in Hughes office, standing over his desk complaining about Collins and the invasion of his house. He recalls the steady gaze Hughes gave him, the words of advice underlined with other things, other directives not spoken.

“Yes, sir.”

Hughes nods and asks Diana and Jones to leave the room for a moment. Both smile at him and exit without a word. “I don’t have to tell you how it looks to have your semen and Caffrey’s at the scene, Peter.”

“No, no you don’t.”

“This isn’t going to end well.”

Peter thinks of Neal. The last he saw him; the last memories pepper his brain now. He doesn’t care how it will end for him. When he thinks of Neal, he can only see the terror on his face. Hands on his arms, gun to his head, dragged away from Peter. The swing of the bat stopped Peter from going after him. “I think we have to worry more about Neal.”

“That we do,” Hughes says. “Whoever took him planned it to make it look like you did it.”

“They planned it like that to have time to get Neal away,” Peter states. “I was a happy coincidence.”

“I can do what I can to clean up the mess you left, but Caffrey has to be found.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re a damned good agent, Peter. I’ll do everything I can.”

“Thank you, sir.”

*oOo*

Two days later and the clock ticks away. There’s no trace of Neal and Peter feels like he’s going out of his mind. Mozzie has the whole of the ‘criminal underworld’ in search of the missing conman. Peter asked Jones to put an alert out to find ‘Sam’ aka ‘James’. The Marshals are getting anxious and they set their sights on Peter again. He’s been through three interrogations and has hired an attorney. He’s not sure how much longer he can hold them off before they arrest him. He is still the prime suspect.

He isn’t sure he hasn’t made up the masked men to cover up the real memories.

There are holes in his recollections of the hours before Neal disappeared. He recounts them over and again until he feels like he’s worn them thin and bare. He recalls discussing who knows what at the bureau about Sam/James. Neal and Peter literally had their heads together puzzling the pieces into a picture to get an overview of what happened 30 odd years ago.

Of course the ever elusive Sam/James didn’t show for the meeting.

Neal became frantic, worried that his fickle father left him again – or was killed – or was conning him again. The man left Neal, the consummate observer of human nature, completely unhinged. It took all Peter could handle to get Neal to settle and concentrate.

The breadcrumb trail left them with little else. They started with the beating Sam/James received, then they jumped to the DNA, and then they followed it to the inevitable conclusion. Of course it had been a setup, the beating of Sam/James (and Peter really needs to stop thinking of him as Sam slash James because he isn’t Sam and he is James) was to do one thing and one thing only. It had been too easy to rescue James. It reeked of set up, which pointed to one thing whoever the enemy is; they were trying to flush out James’ weakness, his support. If you cut off support, you make the person more vulnerable.

Neal had walked right into the trap.

Peter played the trap by running the DNA through the bureau and now whoever was crooked in the bureau knew that Neal was James Bennett’s son.

They planned it well. They abducted Neal and played it so that it looked like Peter committed the crime. Law enforcement lost precious time. Three days later and Neal is in the wind. The Flynns or someone within the bureau has him and Peter has no clues how to find him.

He should have stopped everything. He could have but he didn’t. Neal screaming at him, telling him to go to hell. They needed to find James; they needed to focus their energy on rooting out the crooked cops that wrecked his family. Peter held him, grabbed him close, and braced against the storm that rattled through him. Instead of calling in his team, his trusted team, he pressed a kiss to Neal’s temple and fought his wrath with arms and legs. He waited out the fury, the anger until it burned out and Neal lay spent and begging to feel something, something more than being lost.

He accepts his mistake but he cannot accept losing Neal.

Not like this.

Not forever.

Elizabeth cradles him in her arms in the late night as they say goodbye to another day and the night whispers of dark dreams.

*oOo*

The call comes in five days after Neal went missing.

Peter forgets how to breathe when Diana reports to him that Neal has been found. Mercifully, she gives him all of the information in one long stream of dialogue. “They found him. Seems he was tossed in the original warehouse Neal discovered James being beaten in. He’s alive, Boss,” Diana says. “But barely. You should get to the hospital.”

On the way to the hospital, Peter realizes he left his phone on his desk and he has no way to alert Elizabeth. His hands fumble and he opens the car door as Diana pulls her SUV to park at the emergency room entrance. He doesn’t say a word to her, just races into the reception desk and flashes his badge.

His demands are met with a cool regard but the nurse looks up Neal Caffrey. Her face softens as she reads the information and she directs him to what they call urgent or U- ICU*. He doesn’t know when Diana meets him but suddenly he’s in the elevator and she hits the button for U- ICU. His knees jell on him and Diana takes a hold of his upper arm and shepherds him through the corridors. He finds himself at yet another nurses’ desk but Diana takes charge and asks for Neal Caffrey.

The nurse points to the room.

Doubting Thomas is there again. His face stern and his eyes like water – still, unmoved, and cold. He glances at Diana, then at Peter. He nods. “You’re officially off the hook, Agent Burke.”

“That’s _Special_ Agent Burke, asshole,” Diana says and brushes past him to guide Peter into the room.

A nurse stands over Neal’s bruised and bloodied body. He is naked, just as Peter last saw him. It is clear he hasn’t eaten in days by the shallow look to his flesh and the wan color of his skin. There are machines hooked up to him beeping and clicking, a tube drains red fluid from his chest, and a cloth over his groin. Swaths of bandages cover his eyes and head. A respirator hums as it lifts his chest to breathe for Neal. The nurse dabs a wipe across his chest, cleaning away the torn skin but Peter can still see the words carved into his chest.

_J_  
All our love  
F 

The nurse looks up. She smiles gently and says, “They’re coming to bring him to surgery. You don’t have much time.”

Peter steps toward the bed, but takes a pace away. His heart ricochets in his chest, bouncing and hitting and thrumming against his ribcage. He bends over, places his hands on his knees, and gasps for air. Diana clutches a hand on his shoulder and steadies him. It balances him and he nods before he straightens.

The nurse murmurs, “He’s stabilized for now.”

“What’s, what’s wrong?” Peter cannot say it; he cannot ask about the damage done to his love. Before him lies a ruined body. The answer comes from behind as the doctor walks into the room.

“May I ask your relationship to the patient?” The doctor shoves his hands in his pockets.

“He’s my partner,” Peter says and silently implores the doctor not to qualify the statement because right now he’s going to blurt out that Neal is more than his CI, that Neal is his lover, and his partner in life along with his wife.

The doctor considers him for a minute. He places his wire framed glasses onto his bald dark head and squints at Peter. “Okay, then.” He moves Peter to the side of the room and says in a low, respectful voice. “Your partner had multiple old shallow stab wounds which are infected but are the least of our worries. He’s taken a severe beating over several days.

“The majority of the impacts focused on his head and chest. His skull is fractured and his ribcage damaged. We have to go in and ease the swelling of his brain and stabilize his chest cavity.

“We’re most concerned about the damage to his heart. We’ve placed a chest tube for drainage and we’ll go in and repair the blood vessels feeding the heart muscle. He’ll be intubated during the operation and on a ventilator for the duration of the induced coma to help with respiration.”

With the last of the doctor’s words, Peter’s knees buckle and only Diana’s firm hand on his arm stops him from folding. She backs him into a chair and glares at the doctor. He mumbles something to her that Peter doesn’t catch. After a few minutes, the doctor joins Peter and slides a chair over to sit as well.

“We’ll do everything we can to help him.” The doctor peers over his shoulder at Diana as if to gauge how he should broach the next bit of information. “I’m not going to sugar coat it, sir. It doesn’t look good. It’ll be a long road, if-.”

“If he survives,” Peter finishes for the doctor.

“Why don’t you go and talk to him. We’re bringing him up for surgery in a few minutes.” The doctor pats him on the shoulder and stands to leave. “He has a chance, at least he has that.”

Peter shivers as the doctor leaves, and then notices Diana still stands sentinel next to him. “Di, can I have a few?”

She only nods and says, “I’ll call Elizabeth.”

“Thanks.”

Once she departs, Peter straightens his shoulders and readies himself to approach the bed with the too still figure on it. He inhales a deep breath and crosses the room. He stops and stares down at the shattered man before him. The ripped flesh, the emaciated skin with its discolored swelling all turn in his gut until he wants to vomit. Neal’s papery skin wraps over his crushed ribcage and Peter can actually see individual ribs, where they are cracked or broken. He notices the ribcage is slightly depressed over the heart. One thing stands out above all the bruises and hurts, Neal’s hands – his hands untouched, unharmed. It is clear he was bound from the ligature marks on his wrist, but his hands are perfect in shape and form.

He reaches out and lifts the wrappings from Neal’s face. The tube down his throat feeds Neal oxygen. The one side of his face swells into a deformed shape so that Peter cannot even see Neal’s eye. There’s blood smeared over his face and he can see several bumps on his forehead. He doesn’t know where to touch Neal, what to say.

An orderly walks into the room and clears his throat. Peter raises his hand to ask for one moment.

He clasps his fingers over Neal’s pristine hand. He leans down and touches his lips to the palm. “Come back to me, Neal. Come back.”

*oOo*

El anchors him through the hours, through the days that come. He should be happy that they’ve progressed from minutes to hours to days, yet watching the huddled form on the bed through days and nights without movement frightens him. He sees the same reflected in his wife’s eyes. She’s never seen him this worried, this horrified - of course she wasn’t there the moment he realized Keller had kidnapped her.

He feels as if the world warps and distorts as he waits for Neal to respond, to suddenly _be_ again. All he sees in the bed before him is an image of someone he used to know, someone he might have loved.

Sometimes he stands with his hands on his hips and watches the ventilator as it breathes for Neal, as they await the induced coma to allow the swelling of his brain to subside, as they watch the temporary pacemaker ensure his bruised and injured heart still beats with regularity. He looks frailer by the day. Peter feels his heart wither with the dying man before him.

El closes the gap between them and curls her arms around him. “Hold on to him, hold tight. Don’t let him go, Peter, because I’m not letting you go with him.”

He glances down at her and meets her purposeful eyes. She knows if Neal leaves, Peter cannot exist without him, not anymore. They’ve become a pair, a duo; they complete parts of the other no one else can. She accepts that and it makes him love her even more. He circles his arms about her and doesn’t let her go; he needs to feel the breadth of her, the weight of her against him. He needs to know there is some good in this reality.

*oOo*

They remove the ventilator a week after Neal’s surgery since the swelling of his brain has decreased enough to allow him to breathe on his own. When Neal takes his first breath without assistance, Peter crumples and Jones has to lead him to a chair. No one remarks on his reaction.

The vigil is far from over; now they wait for Neal to awake. The hours tick by, the days add to them. Peter curses Neal’s father who never shows up at the hospital. Peter sits in an almost brotherly understanding with Mozzie as they watch for any signs from Neal. Peter clasps June’s hand and gives her strength as she murmurs a prayer or two under her breath. He learns many things during these days.

He learns Neal’s father is a coward.

He learns Mozzie’s support is unwavering.

He learns June’s faith is unstoppable.

He learns his love is immeasurable.

The moment Neal opens his eyes Peter happens to look up from the newspaper clutched in his hand. Neal’s eyes flutter, that flicker of eye lashes that turns the whole world upside down, and he blinks before he focuses on Peter. His dry lips open and a hoarse sound slips out. He has no idea what Neal says, but it is the most wonderful sound he’s heard.

He hovers over Neal’s bed, looking at the healing face, the wrapped torso, the partially shaved head and he perceives a beautiful sight. Neal recognizes him.

“Peter.”

It is light and breathless and harsh. It is love.

“Neal,” Peter says and threads his fingers through Neal’s hand, his perfect hand.

“Missed you,” Neal forces out between his cracked lips.

“Oh babe, you don’t know how much I missed you,” Peter says and cups his hand against the uninjured side of Neal’s face. “Everything is good now, everything is fine.”

“Love you.”

Peter leans over and brushes his lips against Neal’s forehead. “Love you, too.”

For now, for this day and onward, Peter knows his life and his love will survive.

THE END.

Author's Notes: *U-ICU is based on something they do near where I live. Not sure they do it in NYC. Oh and the title is from the wonderful new song by Adele "Skyfall" - it is for the new Bond movie - good for a story about James Bonds, right?


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